14 July 2012

Stalking Virg Clenthills Blues

In a marquee in Snowdonia, Richard Gibbs catches up with country music “legend”
Virgil Clenthills III, alter ego of Gareth Owen, poet, novelist and former
presenter of BBC Radio 4’s “Poetry Please”…..

The sun is sinking, like a plum
in an oil slick.Canvas flaps, earth and
crushed grass churn underfoot.Hilary
greets us as we slip into the warmth of her marquee, steel pegs and raw sisal
upholding the peace.Outside the sun
goes on sinking, while the river shivers on into the sea, past darkening trees
and strands of salt marsh.Inside we are
cheered with fizzy wine and propelled into a barn dance.

It’s a well drilled melee: the
caller expertly corralling the herd: Penny swings with actor John; Lucia does
the doz-e-doh with a slender man in a black Stetson – could it be Virgil
Clenthills III?The sheep-shorn beard,
the crushed lilac top, the yellowing cowboy boots – this had to be the country
legend, the one, the only, the man of whom it was once said, “‘If you've
ever woken up with a broken heart in one hand and an empty bourbon bottle in
the other - Virg is singing just for you.”My wife pretends to swoon; I pretend to catch her.The author of “A Song for Hank Williams,” is just a step away.

Virgil Clenthills swears he was born
in August 1939 in Intercourse, Missouri,
son of an illegal English immigrant and half Shoshone Virginia Mae Pluckett who
then orphaned him at the age of five with a Packard. But really Virg was
created by Gareth Owen at 70, in Ludlow.

As Virg recalls, he launched his
“World Tour of Ludlow, Presteigne, Ross and
B’ham,” in 2010 to avoid the limelight, and tonight we find him in Bontddu, in
the SnowdoniaNational Park, on The Dolgellau to
Barmouth Mawddach Trail.Now, as the
sheep draw near, bleating like Tennessee
crickets, Virg sets up his keyboard and exposes his country veins, lurching
into “Stone Drunk Again” with barely
a glance at the words.

Then, as
the Welsh Whisky flows, we join in the chorus of “Happy with That,” a classic tale of degeneracy and domestic discord
on a run-down Kentucky
homestead.

Later, we
cross the creaking bridge back to the George III Hotel at Penmaenpool, the moon
above like a pearl set on black satin, singing: